The current pandemic has had and will continue to have dramatic implications for our lives, for global economics and for geopolitics. Global dialogue is more necessary than ever at this time: global challenges indeed require international cooperation, and can’t be tackled by national responses alone. DOC’s work is structured around three main spheres: Economics, Geopolitics, and Cultures & Civilizations. Our analysis of the COVID-19 crisis is no exception.
Throughout the month of April, DOC held a series of three webinars with speakers from around the world exploring the consequences of the coronavirus and its potential transformational effects longer-term. Each webinar focused on one of the three spheres that the DOC specializes in.
The first event took place on 9 April and invited Vladimir Popov of DOC, James K. Galbraith of the Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Affairs, and Jomo Kwame Sundaram, former senior advisor at the UN dept. for Economic and Social Affairs, to speak on the economic fallout of the COVID-19 crisis and the threat of a global recession. The speakers asserted that what was needed throughout and in the aftermath of the pandemic was greater solidarity, and social organization, as shown in the East Asian response to COVID-19.
DOC’s second webinar on 21 April, focusing on geopolitics and the opportunity for a reset of the global order, invited Shada Islam, director of Friends of Europe, Wang Huiyao, president and co-founder of the Center for China and Globalisation, and Suresh Prabhu, India’s Sherpa to the G20. Here the speakers highlighted the degree to which the pandemic had exacerbated the crisis of global governance which has been unfolding in the past years, and called for more multilateral action, and greater international cooperation to not only deal with this pandemic, but also any future international crisis that may arise.
The third webinar hosted on 29 April, focusing on humanity, its values, and the need to rethink international solidarity, invited Hakima Al Haité, president of International Liberal, former vice president of the COP21 and former Minister of Environment in Morocco, Ruben Vardanyan, co-founder of Moscow School of Management SKOLKOVO, and KJ Alphons, former Minister of Culture of India. Among the conclusions drawn from the discussion, was the need to refocus humanity’s values from oftentimes extractive materialism, and a call to re-evaluate the ethical basis of human society.
Each webinar drew a large live audience from across the globe, with participants posing questions from the USA, Chile, Brazil, Belgium, Greece, and India, emphasizing the global nature of the current crisis and the need for dialogue.
You can watch back each of the DOC webinars on our YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KdJMUAxk7wM&list=PLF1usGzxawcwUbD2R7u-E8GVckGPrU_-S
Our next webinar, commemorating the 75th anniversary of the end of World War Two, takes place on 8 May at 15:00 CEST. More information on how to register and attend can be found here.
